1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to fishing lures, in particular to a fishing lure made of a cast of a natural bait which overcomes the limitations of the prior art and/or having a hook clip.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the past previous attempts have been made to provide a fishing lure which has been molded from an actual fish specimen. U.S. Pat. No. 4,108,955 ('955 Patent) issued to Thom, describes a process in which the necessary attachments have been incorporated for attaching the hooks and fishing line.
The fishing lure created resulting from utilizing this process, however, had disadvantages in actual practice and manufacture in that the fins and tail section of the fishing lure were too thin to be manufactured effectively by common manufacturing methods and most available materials without being too fragile or impractical in actual use.
Subsequently, the same inventor (Thom) later applied and received U.S. Pat. No. 4,238,444 ('444 Patent) in which the casting process was modified to overcome this disadvantage in order to make the fishing lure more durable and easier to manufacture.
The modification of the process described in the '444 Patent involves removing the fins and tail section from the original baitfish and replacing such with fins and a tail section that have been sculpted from clay or other modeling material to have the appearance and profile dimension of the natural baitfish; but being thicker in dimension so as to overcome the problems associated with the original casting process.
However, the lure described therein, while overcoming the problems associated with casting the razor thin fins and tail section of the natural baitfish described in the '955 Patent, has an inherent disadvantage in that the replacement fins and tail section which have been sculpted or modeled and then reattached to the fishing lure can never fully reproduce the original detail found in nature, as well as increasing the complexity of the process and time involved for casting the natural bait fishing lure.
The present invention provides an improved artificial fishing lure which overcomes these shortcomings. It is therefore to the effective resolution of the above shortcomings that the present invention is directed.